Ultima Vez

Ultima Vez was founded in 1986 as the company and dance company of choreographer, dancer, filmmaker and photographer Wim Vandekeybus. Since its foundation, Ultima Vez has strongly developed its activities as an international contemporary dance company with a strong base in Brussels and Flanders.

Vandekeybus’ movement language, which opposes energy, risk and danger to intuition, impulse and instinct, is the dance expression of a dramatic vision of life, full of dynamism and conflict. At the heart of his work is the palpable tension between body and mind, feeling and intellect, man and woman, nature and culture, human and animal, group and individual, illusion and reality Vandekeybus constantly asks himself the same question: how does man react in extreme situations ? In this context, he talks about the “moment of catastrophe,“ without excluding humour, playfulness and a certain lightness from his work.

Vandekeybus’ performances are associative montages that preferably evolve in disciplines that have retained a high degree of autonomy. His dance has a strong theatrical quality. (Live) music and video/film are an integral part of this theatrical expression and are often the driving force behind the performances. Vandekeybus has worked with musicians such as Thierry De Mey, Peter Vermeersch, David Byrne, David Eugene Edwards, Arno, Charo Calvo, Mauro, Marc Ribot and Trixie Whitley.

Ultima Vez is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, since the first performance of What The Body Does Not Remember in Heerlen (NL) in June 1987. This season the company will create Scattered Memories, a performance in which Wim Vandekeybus will approach the present with one foot in the future and one look over his shoulder into the past. In Scattered Memories, dancers from the past and the present will come together and pieces from past performances will be repeated in combination with new choreography.
At the same time, the company will tour throughout Europe its two latest creations, TRACES and Hands do not touch your precious Me. They will continue its participatory work in the heart of the Sint-Jans-Molenbeek neighbourhood, and will provide production support to emerging choreographers, such as Seppe Baeyens, Zoë Demoustier and Bahar Temiz.

“His grammar of gesture is spectacular: inverted bodies leaning on a hand or suspended from hooks, perennial pas de deux. In a line of smoke, the soloists seem to waltz with shadows.“

Philippe Noisette, Les Échos

“A key figure in the Brussels Movida, Wim Vandekeybus is famous for his dance, which he has always combined with theatrical and cinematographic elements.“

Valérie Guédot, France Inter